Baguazhang Fighting Stepping

[KTS]

snake similar to mantis? we mean shaolin here, yeah?

from what i have seen, much of the shaolin animals bear a great resemblence in basic technique.

dimeth...

yeah, that is along the same lineage u spoke of with Luo btw. my eacher trained with hung and his senior students. he started training, i think, a year or 2 before luo did.

but luo also trained with many others. i am not sure all of whom my teach trained with, i know he did white crane some some taiji back then(1960's-70's taiwan.)

but, since my teach and luo and basically classmates in a sense, if not literally, i have met luo and one of the other more famous students now teaching such as su dong chen(love this guy!)

my teach, focused more on xingyi for the bulk of his first 2.5 or 3 years with hung. so that is what i focus on. but, bagua is simply awesome when done right. being thrown first hand by luo in one way, then the next, and having been thrown, elbowed, smacked, etc gives me easily a great impression of how a bagua infighting works well, not to even mention getting to the part where you can get slammed to the floor or thrown 7 feet backwards like a gust of wind just picked your @ss up. and i am no ragdoll if i say so myself.

perhaps, in the next year or so i will focus on bagua more. i have a few xingyi animal forms to complete and maybe another 2 person fighting set to work with. and at least one weapon form.

combine those with my chen hunyuan taiji and being back into college, i am a busy guy!

[dimethylsea]

Originally Posted by KTS

snake similar to mantis? we mean shaolin here, yeah?

from what i have seen, much of the shaolin animals bear a great resemblence in basic technique.

Just for the record bro.. that clip was of me mixing CIMANDE ULAR (snake flavor cimande) pentjak silat (indonesian martial arts) on top of my usual bagua base. Nothing to do with Shaolin.. though I can see (in retrospect) that it might look kinda like mantis.
But the only snake I know anything about is the Ular/snake style in pencak silat and the snake aspect of Gao bagua (f.i. in our branch of Gao the whole houtien is called 后天蛇形缠连掌 or snake winding).

perhaps, in the next year or so i will focus on bagua more. i have a few xingyi animal forms to complete and maybe another 2 person fighting set to work with. and at least one weapon form.

combine those with my chen hunyuan taiji and being back into college, i am a busy guy!

Dude.. you work with the best you can when you can as much as you can. And life gets in the way

It's like that old saying
"Well darling you.. and me.. and baby makes....

... life an endless stream of compromises!".

There is alot of stuff that ZeZong line has that is... well it's not that it's stuff "only" we have.. so much as it's stuff other Gao lines have in their manuals but don't seem to focus on.. even though it's very much "low-hanging fruit" and very helpful to me.

So alot of me talking up my branch is to try and get the young guys in other Gao lines to look at their own internal lore and be like "oh yeah.. when did people stop thinking this was important?"

One of the great strengths of Gao bagua is that it is, *fundamentally* a LITERATE tradition of bagua. That's critical to my way of thinking.

[dimethylsea]

Originally Posted by KTS

snake similar to mantis? we mean shaolin here, yeah?

from what i have seen, much of the shaolin animals bear a great resemblence in basic technique.

Just for the record bro.. that clip was of me mixing CIMANDE ULAR (snake flavor cimande) pentjak silat (indonesian martial arts) on top of my usual bagua base. Nothing to do with Shaolin.. though I can see (in retrospect) that it might look kinda like mantis.
But the only snake I know anything about is the Ular/snake style in pencak silat and the snake aspect of Gao bagua (f.i. in our branch of Gao the whole houtien is called 后天蛇形缠连掌 or snake winding).

perhaps, in the next year or so i will focus on bagua more. i have a few xingyi animal forms to complete and maybe another 2 person fighting set to work with. and at least one weapon form.

combine those with my chen hunyuan taiji and being back into college, i am a busy guy!

Dude.. you work with the best you can when you can as much as you can. And life gets in the way

It's like that old saying
"Well darling you.. and me.. and baby makes....

... life an endless stream of compromises!".

There is alot of stuff that ZeZong line has that is... well it's not that it's stuff "only" we have.. so much as it's stuff other Gao lines have in their manuals but don't seem to focus on.. even though it's very much "low-hanging fruit" and very helpful to me.

So alot of me talking up Gao is to try and get the other young guys in other Gao lines to look at their own internal lore and be like "oh yeah.. when did people stop thinking this was important?"

[woliveri]

I did mantis many years ago. Mantis and Snake are similar in appearances with the exception of the hand (snake = finger strikes, mantis = also finger but more towards pressure points and also the grabbing/trapping of the mantis hand).

Anyway, from the clip it looked similar to how mantis would move and attack..

that's all.

[KTS]

haha. yeah man, time and business can get in the way a lot! very annoying when u just wanna spend a whole day practicing!

and i have to travel to learn! so it is almost work to get a class in without being busy! but, a note to any of you beginners or prospective students: if learning with the best in your "area" means traveling 50 or 100 miles every week or two, do it! it is vastly superior to learning from a person who knows half as much but is 10 times closer.

anyways,

even so, i feel fortunate to be able to have had the experience to see not only different sides/point of views of different higher level teachers, but also be able to experience them and get the "feel" of how each person has took the same relative teachings and interpretated or personalized them. it gives a great perspective and helps you find your own place and tempo in the system one is learning.


so Dimethylsea, can u recommend some clips of that indonesian style you know? anything on youtube you wanna send me i would appreciate? i know a little bit of the art, but never had any hands on work with it and would love to see the work of any skilled artists at it if you dont mind.

my lineages, easy to search for su dong chen, hong yixiang, luo dexiu, brinkman, cartmell, etc; chen zhonghua, feng zhiqiang - his daughters as well.

[dimethylsea]

Originally Posted by KTS

so Dimethylsea, can u recommend some clips of that indonesian style you know? anything on youtube you wanna send me i would appreciate? i know a little bit of the art, but never had any hands on work with it and would love to see the work of any skilled artists at it if you dont mind.

Hands down the best silat man putting lots of clips up on youtube is Bobbe Edmonds (IMO).

Since we are talking about footwork here are two of his clips on the same.. There are profound similarities in good bagua and good silat when it comes to attacking the legs with the legs...

Elements of Sapu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYjWjKeT7s
Foot Trapping and Lowline Entires http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQx2VZ5wbBU

On Bobbe's "Elements of Sapu" he clearly demonstrates the first three of what Gao style calls the "Five Elements for the Flat Basin" (i.e. Kou, Bai, and Jie).
You usually don't see silat styles do the Duo or Tang (the other two of the five elements for the flat basin).

Keep in mind Bobbe is VERY good. Trained with alot of names, both in North America and in Indonesia.

[KTS]

nice!

very good vids man! a lot of it definitely remind me of bagua. from change opponents body position by moving the arm across, the kuo and bai footworks, and the fluidity of change in both the opponents direction of movement and the technique to be used.

it is definitely great that more people are experiencing arts like these.

btw, i must have seen that guy before on some videos. very skillful. i can tell.

[dimethylsea]

Originally Posted by KTS

btw, i must have seen that guy before on some videos. very skillful. i can tell.

Yeah pretty much all his stuff on youtube is top notch. If I'm as good at bagua as Bobbe is at silat by the time I'm his age I will count myself very very fortunate.

I particularly like the way (as you mentioned) he pulls/turns the target's arm off the leg line while executing the foot technique. It's a little bit many people miss.. but it's a bagua staple.

Get offline, get to their flank, turn them off/split their center line so the hand and foot do not harmonize/coordinate, and attack the feet. All at once.

One thing Laoshi emphasizes alot is the yao shou/asking hand, followed by the zhua/grab to whatever they threw up to block the "asking hand". If you coordinate it well with the stepping it makes the "Get offline... all at once" formular above exceedingly smooth.

Just very simple basics.. but "low-hanging fruit" is just as tasty and nutritious as the stuff at the top of the fruit tree. And alot more accessible to people at my own modest level.